Education

The first post in Marcomblog happened on Saturday, November 13, 2004. We’ll celebrate our third anniversary in just a few months. That’s a long time ago. Many students have passed through my classes and participated in our social media activities. So, I had this funny idea. Hundreds of those students have graduated and gone on to careers in public relations and marketing communications. Why not hear from one of them? I asked Mary Kneeland (MK) if she would write a post reflecting on the transition from student to practitioner. Here it is.

Welcome Mary Kneeland Metcalf back to Marcomblog.

Currently I am experiencing a lot of firsts in my life. First big move, first time living alone and out of the south, first time without the parent’s money, first job … and the list could go on forever. After graduating from Auburn last year, I was offered the job of a lifetime: working for Edelman with their me2revolution group.

I was, as you will be, given the tools during my time to make myself unique among college graduates looking for PR jobs. I was given the incredibly powerful knowledge of social media.

Out of my first job sprung my first conference, BlogHer. And out of that came the opportunity to meet in person some of the practitioners that take the time out of their lives to teach us some of their vast knowledge. Josh Hallett and Susan Getgood, both Marcom contributors, were present. The whole weekend, all I could think about was this transformation I had just made from student to practitioner.

From this conference and the subsequent online conversation, I learned many valuable ideas from which we all could really benefit. Take some time to read Susan Getgood’s post on the weekend. Follow all the links and you will get a good idea about the conversation that took place after BlogHer.

At the most basic level, the most important thing I took from the weekend is that relationships matter. If you take the opportunity that you have been given with the PR curriculum at Auburn, you have the chance to form relationships with some of the most powerful people in the business.

No example of this is better than my classmate, Christi Eubanks. Christi searched and searched for the right jobs coming out of college. She is the one of the best writers and strategic thinkers that I ever came across at Auburn. She had all of the tools to make a hugely successful practitioner. After months of searching and unsuccessful interviews, she dedicated herself to updating her blog and getting involved with the ongoing public relations conversation online. A few weeks later, Christi now has a dream job working at Converseon in New York City with Paull Young and Constantin Basturea, two influential practitioners. I am confident that if you ask Christi why she got her job, she would say her involvement with social media.

Use this time now to stay ahead of the learning curve by dedicating time everyday to reading the blogs of those who spend their lives learning about the power of social media. Form relationships with the contributors of this blog, because these are brilliant people. Then, one day, you could be lucky enough to work for one of them. Social media is here to stay and if you want to be a player in the PR world, you have to grasp it now. Do not throw away a chance to learn the ins and outs of this vast world. To steal Seth Godin’s idea, don’t settle with being good enough.

Best of luck to you guys this semester in Style and Design. There will be moments where you will want to pull your hair out and just start crying. (WARNING: If you guys do this, leave the room because the #1 rule is that there is NO CRYING IN LAB!) I promise you that if you commit yourself to truly understanding the information that is being thrown at you at warp speed, you will be many steps ahead of the thousands of people across the US graduating with the same degree.

And always remember, relationships matter.

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I’m very grateful to Mary for making the return visit to our class activities. Last time we saw Mary around these parts, she was leaving comment number 7243 on Dave Forstrom’s post - Tech PR…What Do You Want to Know? Now, she’s back as a guest contributor. This makes me very happy. Thank you, MK. I appreciate you returning to the loveliest village and to Marcomblog. Please visit her blog, too. Mary’s writing about life as a southern transplant Displaced in Chicago.

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G’day and greetings from ‘a land down under’!

Welcome to the third year that Robert has been encouraging and cajoling and relentlessly beating students into submission — welcome to the world of blogging, podcasting, vidcasting, social media, Web2.0 and a zillion other phrases that will, by the end of the first semester, slip off your tongue as easily as …as …well, as easily as something that easily slips off your tongue.

Shel Holtz (who is a blogger you should definitely put onto your ‘must read’ list) has recently been discussing with colleagues whether PR practitioners deserve to be called ‘professionals’, indeed whether PR itself is a ‘profession’.

Fellow Marcomm contributor Kami Huyse recounted the exasperation that she felt when undertaking an exercise to fund the further training of PR practitioners in ethics. Kami had to excise the word ‘professional’ to get any agreement with a lawyer creating the formal endowment documents. The argument principally revolves around the question “what is a profession?” Here’s some definitions…

The American Heritage Dictionary — “An occupation, such as law, medicine, or engineering, that requires considerable training and specialized study.”

The Macquarie Dictionary — “a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science, especially one of the three vocations of theology, law, and medicine (formerly known specifically as the professions or the learned [pronounced “learn-ED”] professions); the body of persons engaged in an occupation or calling”

Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary — “a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation”

Each would seem to suggest that what you will be doing, and what the esteemed contributors to this blog are already doing, is the work of a professional within a ‘profession’.

Now that we are all pleased with ourselves, consider this:

I would argue that ‘PR’ as a discipline sits within a larger rubric of ‘Business Communication’. If that is the case, then one could argue that ‘Business Communication’ is itself a profession, making me (not a PR professional since I have never undergone extensive academic training in it) a ‘Business Communication professional’, a title of which I am proud and a reason why I belong to the IABC: the International Association of Business Communicators.

But every manager I have ever met, plus most of their subordinates, believes them self to be an accomplished, if not superb, business communicator. They hold this view of themselves despite a lack of any extensive and rigorous academic training, and just because they have been forced over the years to deliver a few PowerPoint presentations to small audiences or run some mid-year staff assessment programs. Usually I find that the more they ‘rate’ themselves as a ‘great’ business communicator, the more hopeless they actually are; there seems to be some correlation between their self rating and a love of hearing their own voice.

We could equally point to any number of PR ‘(un)professionals’ whose press releases are, by all applicable standards of suitability, relevance, timeliness, appearance and ‘good taste’, absolutely appalling. You don’t need to undergo university training to use a Press Release template in Word and crank it out to as many email and fax addresses as you can find. Thus, one could argue, ‘Business Communication’ and ‘PR’ are not professions, because ‘anyone can do it’.

So the question I ask you to consider, and to ask of Robert, is whether at the end of your years of turmoil, tension, agony, ecstasy, grief, epic and/or tragic romances, hangovers, dodgy late-night pizzas, blood, sweat and tears you will graduate with a piece of paper in your hand, or whether you will graduate with a piece of paper AND the knowledge that you are now part of a profession and must behave like a professional.

And if you are part of a profession, how will you explain that to your family, friends and work associates in a way that elevates your profession and your professional standing, and differentiates you from the scum that lies at the bottom of every barrel?

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